


Ghosts That Might Have Been

by Polly_Lynn



Series: Tumblr Methadone [2]
Category: Castle
Genre: Crushes, F/M, Friendship, Male-Female Friendship, Romance, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-10
Updated: 2016-05-10
Packaged: 2018-06-07 15:30:42
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,200
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6811123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Polly_Lynn/pseuds/Polly_Lynn
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"He fades back. She’s gathering herself and it’s … she deserves her privacy. Everything about her, from the lift of her chin to the determined jut of her hip demands it. But champagne sloshes against the green glass of the bottle, and he’s drawn to her. Empathy, misery, and company. He’s drawn to her. His hands are shaking, too."</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ghosts That Might Have Been

**Author's Note:**

> A Tag-ish thing for "Always Buy Retail" 1 x 06. Exactly 1200 words

Her hands are shaking.

He thinks it’s his imagination at first. He thinks it must be. But the bracelets of her cuffs clang together as the uniform swaps his own for hers and takes custody of Baylor. She flips them until the wide circles overlap. It’s a casual gesture, or it’s meant to be. She moves to slip one into the front pocket of her jeans and misses the first time. The first few times. Her hands are shaking.

“Beckett?” He offers her the champagne bottle without thinking.

She makes a face and turns away. She presses her palms to the outside of her thighs. It’s quick, but he’s already seen. She knows, too. She knows he’s caught her, and she hates it.

He fades back. She’s gathering herself and it’s … she deserves her privacy. Everything about her, from the lift of her chin to the determined jut of her hip demands it. But champagne sloshes against the green glass of the bottle, and he’s drawn to her. Empathy, misery, and company. He’s drawn to her. His hands are shaking, too.

They’re alive, but it could just as easily have gone the other way. It moves him. Electrifies him. He drives forward without thinking. He grabs one of the flutes dangling from Diana Edwards’ creaking DIY wine rack and pours an uncertain glass far too quickly. It foams up. He ducks toward it and lifts it to his mouth. A jerky motion that somehow does end with it all over him. He sips at it. Lets it settle and envies that it does. That it can.

She’s stepped away by then. She’s put distance between them. Pointed, emphatic distance, but he follows anyway. They could’ve died, and it’s nothing to be ashamed of. The rattle of silver in her hands. Glass chiming against glass in his.

He joins her in the shadow of the pillar. The cove between it and the book case. He drifts to her side and watches as she fiddles with her notebook. It’s busy work to cover, and he wonders if it’s obvious. He wonders if everyone can see she’s doing it to snatch a moment apart. To gather herself. He wonders if anyone else sees the way her hands are shaking.

“Beckett.”

He says it quietly this time. He offers her the glass and tries not to look like he’s bracing himself. She takes it from his fingers, though. She actually takes it, and he half thinks she’s going to toss it in his face. He half thinks she should. She didn’t want him to follow. She never does, and she deserves her privacy.

But here he is, and she takes the glass. She sips at first. Follows it with a longer pull, and her eyes close for a second. She breathes deep. Once. Twice. Her eyes flick open again, and she’s steady when she hands it back. When she gives him a curt nod and moves past him, pulled together now. Completely.

He takes the glass from her. One hand, then two. He curls his fingers hard around the stem and drinks down the swallow she’s left him. He slops more into the empty bulb and has to catch the overflow again.

He drinks. He watches her move about the scene, steady and on top of it. Absolutely.

His hands are still shaking.

* * *

 

He walks off with the glass. It’s a necessary evil. Absolutely crucial to his dramatic exit. To the flourish that leaves her flushed and grinning. Annoyed and something more. The parting shot that leaves his own blood thumping in his temples. In the base of his throat and his wrists.

But it’s awkward the moment after that. After he leaves her behind. A uniform scowls at him. Turns a shoulder to keep him from making his way through the doors and on to the street with it. _Oh._ It’s alcohol. An open container.

Castle pauses and chugs down the last of it. It’s too fast. Too much, and his uneasy stomach lets him know. Still, he upends the glass with a rueful grin to show it’s empty. The uniform scowls again, but he steps aside.

He’s stuck with it, then. That’s how he feels at first. As one block, then another disappears beneath his feet. It’s a hindrance to the task at hand. To the urgent need to walk off this dangerous high.

It was a stupid move. Getting that close was stupid, but he’s half drunk, and the champagne is the least of it. He’s a jangling mess of nerves and relief and desire. He almost died. They almost died.

He twirls the stem between his fingers. Studies the cloudy overlap of fingerprints on the bulb. Mostly his. A few of them hers.

Sunlight catches the edge. It shines through the droplets clinging to the inside of the glass. He tosses it into the air. It tips end over end and wobbles.

He wants it, suddenly. He needs to keep it. A memento. A trophy. He _wants_ it, and it’s falling. It’s barely a breath from smashing on the sidewalk when he catches it upright between his fingers. The base just nicks a newspaper box and chimes loud.

He grins, delighted by it all. The single pure note carries him back to that moment in the hallway. To the scent of champagne on her breath and his.

They could have died today, but they didn’t.

* * *

 

He writes.

He stumbles past his mother. Past Alexis and their questions about the shootout. He doesn’t know how they heard. How on earth they would have. He waves them off and falls into his chair with the words churning and churning in his mind.

The glass stands watch just at the edge of the desk as it pours out of him. The scene. It’s hardly writing at all. Dictation, really. Memory flowing out through fingers that are shaking all over again, and he knows he’s captured it exactly. The chaos in his chest—in his gut and fingers and toes—before, during, and after. And alongside it or all around it maybe, certainty. Absolute faith in her. In them.

He can’t get the words out fast enough, even like this, sloppy and untroubled by typos. Red squiggles and errant punctuation mounting, and still it’s not fast enough until it is. Until his hands freeze, shaking and poised a fraction of an inch above the keys.

It’s gone, just like that. The high of everything—before, during, and after—is well and truly gone as the weight of it settles on him. The weight of the realization that this isn’t some picaresque adventure he’s wandered into. This is her life. Her everyday life, and she lives like this. Her father, already alone, already hollowed out, lives like this. All the people who love her do. The thought makes him uneasy in too many ways.

_ All the people who love her. _

He pictures her, eyes closed and head tipped back. He pictures her hands, steady as if she counted the number of times she’d let them tremble and then said Enough. He thinks the world must be crowded with people who love her.

It must be.

**Author's Note:**

> Another thing that, perversely, my Brain wants to post. Had it hanging around forever and thought it might be something else, but it's not, so I tossed it up on Tumblr as part of this ill-advised whatever.


End file.
